I'm a college student at the University of Houston. I've been cooking since I was barely tall enough to reach the knobs on the stove, but I've had more impetus to since I got to college (who wants to eat greasy cafeteria food day in and day out?) I absolutely adore chicken, and I consider it easily the easiest meat to cook with on a college student's budget. From coconut chicken curries to my personal favorite, lemon chicken, the meat has a suggestibility beef and even pork tends to lack. I also adore baked goods (although my skill with them needs improvement--everything comes out of the oven tasting great but looking brown). My mom's from the south, so I grew up with a lot of traditional southern influences on my cooking. At the same time, she spent a lot of time in California and was kind of a product of the hippie generation, so I wound up with a greater appreciation for vegetarian and vegan cuisine than many of my contemporaries. I managed to hammer my first girlfriend into dating me through sheer determination and my lemon chicken and peach bread. I still hold that as one of my finest triumphs--she may have been out of my league, but my cooking was out of hers. I like to experiment a little bit more than a cramped dorm kitchen really allows. There's really no feeling of defeat greater than inviting half a dozen friends over for dinner only to have a faulty thermostat on an oven dry your chicken out past all recognition.